skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If US experience is subpar, international is even worse. Take HK for example, iOS 6 Maps doesn't even come with basic street numbers! To add to the insult, just try searching for "Hong Kong" on Waze, for a laugh... Yes the deformed blob is meant to be HK! Obviously Tim Cook never tested international searches before recommending it...

Commercially this just doesn't make sense given China is the fastest growing market for Apple.

All in all, a very disappointing user experience.
Just because it's money? You're also spending your time, effort, attention, and opportunity cost.

Is college meta because you spend money to work for free with people who also spend money, while learning from people who get paid money to teach you?

You're probably more used to services that monetize with ads, and encourage quantity of accounts at the expense of quality because it's good for their numbers. Nothing meta about one or the other.
Hi there!

I started Shoeboxify a few months ago after leaving my job at Apple last winter. I am seeking thoughts and feedback about the idea.

We have been sharing our lives on Facebook for several years now. We shared pictures of our boyfriends and girlfriends, our fun college years, and perhaps even our first child. Facebook collects so many meaningful photos and stories about our lives, but usually they are buried by noise in the form of YouTube videos, advertisements and updates from people no longer active in our lives.

Shoeboxify is about finding a safe and private container for our feelings. Shoeboxify is not only about privacy, it is also about organizing our photos and post away from the noise of Facebook.

=== On the technical side ===

I would encourage you to play with the shoebox on the page. Also try to resize the browser window to simulate the mobile screen experience, the scaling of the shoebox is optimized (i.e. it is not proportional, so that the text is always easy to read). The whole page is drawn starting from 5 images (http://www.shoeboxify.com/show-HN/sprites/) and I used canvas all over to draw the UI.

Thanks HN community!
Google made a mobile OS because no other company had the software expertise to even remotely challenge Apple.

B doesn't follow from A. First off, it's untrue that nobody else had the software expertise to challenge Apple: there's Microsoft, RIM, Palm, plenty others in 2007. Apple had 1% of the market and no monopoly. But let's pretend that none of that is true and that Apple did come to dominate the market. The dependence was mutual, and Apple would have every reason to fear dependence on Google as visa versa. This should have rationally encouraged cooperation. Apple's only alternative for search and web services would have been Microsoft, even more of a direct competitor (then, in 2007), and one to both Apple and Google at that! Undesirable.

Second, Google's handing out bullets to its competitors like candy and is hurting its ability to lock down mobile. In China, Baidu has ripped out core Google services from Android and has replaced it with Baidu services. Amazon has done the same thing for Fire and replaced Google with Bing. If Facebook were to ever build a phone, it wouldn't have to look much farther than Android. And of course Google on iOS isn't long for this world.

Third, the dependence on a single dominant player still exists. Samsung owns the Android space and can hold Google integration hostage for all kinds of goodies. It's pretty much back to square one re: Apple, except Samsung has OS alternatives (including forking Android [hey, who made S Voice?]), where Apple didn't have Google alternatives. HTC is in the dumps and Google is in a tough spot with privileging Motorola, its new baby, for fear of angering aforementioned Samsung.

So no, in short, it's not clear at all to me that this was a rational move.
PR2 Learns How To Be a Robobutler Without Destroying Things
Having gone through this in the last six months, I found I had more than enough information, and what was standing in my way of leaving was a somewhat complicated mixture of emotions surrounding the act of leaving. Of course, a clear headed look at the circumstances let me wipe all those emotions away, and I left at the right time, and without regrets.

For devs, a great rule of thumb to keep in mind is simply this: When the paychecks stop, so do you. The odds of any startup getting anywhere drop off a cliff once the money runs out, and the founders are running around desperately, talking about commitment and challenge and reward.
Still remember the moment six months into it's history when I found out that Slashdot was a Michigan company. You never heard about any cool Internet companies originating from Michigan in those days. I remember being dumbstruck and then proud, damned proud.
Modeling and analyzing robotic grippers in software | Willow Garage
Ripping Off The Bloody Band-Aid of Google Maps
OSSA - Video News - Android app from Google play
That's like saying that John Deere won't be a successful company because most people won't buy tractors.
Australia dubbed a 'testing ground' for phone security scams
I love Rap Genius, but haven't lyrics websites been repeatedly shut down in the past for copyright infringement? For instance, http://news.cnet.com/lyrics-sites-out-of-tune-with-copyright...

I always assumed that this was why all the lyrics websites were shitty and ad-infested - get money while you can, before you get shut down. And I also assumed that was why Google or Yahoo or some other competent people didn't make a nice lyrics website to outcompete them.

So what's different about Rap Genius?
Dude. you don't have new idea how much one need to go through to get a Green card (Especially people from China and India).

I have friends who have been waiting for more than 10 years in queue to get that. All the 10 years they have to be a slave for a corporate sponsor.

You know what: It is not really helping anybody. Not the people who involved in the process or America.
Paid. Even though we're a nonprofit, our salaries are competitive with other tech companies.
I think it was the pork lobby that commissioned that book.
For me, the most interesting bit concerns how these newer Japanese start-ups are filled with ex-employees of major corporations. Leaving a major corporation was completely unheard of when I left Japan in early 2006. Yet today, it seems to be happening.

Do you have any insight into what's driving this new class of Japanese entrepreneur to leave the comfort and safety of Big Corp.? If so, could you guess how widespread such attitudes might be among young workers in corporate Japan?
Once someone is here, sending them back is a challenge.

And there aren't a ton of well-established people from western countries clamorimg to come here. There are some, but the majority are less established people--students, etc. It's a higher-risk demographic than you imply. Entrepreneurship is inherently quite risky, and there are plenty of unemployed people in tech.
/. user #5825 here. I have great memories of the old days.

Let's start a list of funny and cool things that we learned about for the first time on Slashdot. Here's mine:

1. Google - I still remember the first postings about their search engine and how awesome it was compared to everything else when I first tried it out back in the mid 90's.

2. RootServers, a startup that sold colo'd linux boxes and would give you root--a big deal back in the mid 90's. I saw their ad on /. and was surprised that they were based in my hometown. They later morphed into Rackspace, which has been my employer for the last five years!

3. Mac OS X. I remember the early posts about Rhapsody, which encouraged me to go buy a Mac at the just-opened second-ever Apple Store in DC. Been a Mac user ever since.

I'm sure there's more...
Very cool! D3 was intimidating to me, and personally screencasts similar to this are helpful when trying to get a broad overview of a library. Even better, all the code for each video is provided with a live code editor.
This is true of a lot of founders of companies though. A lot of times the person who is the most invested in leadership for the early success of a company is not necessarily the best person to lead the company in the long term. Zuckerberg is probably the most noticed, recent example: he lead Facebook to the top of the social networking scene, but now investors are scared of him.

Objectivity is something you always need in business.
Based on Marc's reasoning given on the site, sounds like they have an easy pivot into annotating everything if the rights issue takes them out of the lyrics game...
Equivalent is 3 years of work for every one year of bachelors degree missing (so partially college helps)
Seriously. Microsoft, Google, etc, are in no position to lobby for more H1B until they address the rampant anti-competitive employment practices in the industry.
I don't think register_globals has been widely used for at least 10 or 12 years. It's been deprecated for a while and was removed completely in 5.4.0.
The TOS just forbids mixing Twitter updates with updates from other social networks in the same stream, I think.
Tech In The Classroom: Twitter PPT Template
Here's a pattern I've been guilty of:

1. Set up an alert at a conservative usage to make sure nothing like this can happen

2. See alert and know you have plenty of time to fix the issue

3. Get distracted

4. Disk space disaster

We use AppFirst for our monitoring alerts. One thing they don't support is sending recurring alerts while something is over a threshold. They only send when thresholds are crossed.

Right now we're experimenting with PagerDuty reading the AppFirst alerts and then seeing it as an open issue.

I'd love to know what other people are using.
Exactly what I thought. Also "We know only sociopaths find murder OK" - while the US still has Captial punishment and people find all kinds of excuses for murder all the time ("he just found his wife with another man", heat of the moment, etc..)
Definitely more than a map. Google's latest revenue source.

So unfortunately as a developer I would rather spend my efforts helping to improve OpenStreetMap.
True, it's more than a map. It's a map AND a monthly bill!
more info from 2011: http://www.archdaily.com/160892/the-pros-and-cons-of-cargo-c...

I do think they would run into trouble with the local building codes and inspectors.
For me, this is the most important takeaway:
"But how do you let over 24,000+ readers know there is an update available? Amazon does not give publishers access to the customers’ email addresses so you cannot get in touch with them directly."

Amazon may have disintermediated publishers in the author -> publisher -> retailer -> reader chain but there is still opportunity to remove the retailer and have a direct author -> reader relationship.
Sort of. The perception is that app.net is going up against Twitter. In your comparison, that's like saying that John Deere can outsell Ford.

However, the more realistic view is that app.net will remain a niche service, but one that suits techies very well. So, yes, John Deere will corner the market in tractors, but never branch out to cars.
On the other hand eBay has been encouraging the 'buy it now' options the last couple years. Auctions are so passé.
The ROI of SWAG. Frisbee Edition.
Rapgenius is seriously wonderful. I've been listening to more and more rap recently and using rapgenius to find and understand lyrics, the fact that they have the people writing the tracks commenting on the interpretations (via videos) makes it even better.

I finally got to contribute to the site a few weeks ago and I was super happy when they accepted my contribution, I don't know why I was happy, I only got to fix a typo, but it still felt great.

I have no idea how they can make money and the idea seemed silly to me the first time I heard about it ("a site where people explain lyrics is part of yc?") but after using it I'm in love. My enjoyment of rap music has increased thanks to rapgenius.
Ask HN: best practice shareing site?
Hey,

today i was looking at some sites for some java code and some css code and so on.
yeah stackoverflow is a great site but there you get answers to questions.
But i was thinking about a site wehre we share best practices to all topic.
like css: look a animated background
or in java: look this is how you debug right
and so on...

What do you think about that idea?
I'm not sure I would like the caps lock doing double duty as both control and escape, since it seems like it would be easy to accidentally use it wrong. I always remap the caps lock to control, but long ago I trained myself to use control-] in place of escape so I never have to reach for that dreaded key when using vi, and I can also use emacs happily.
Removals Heston TW5
Nope, black spidery things on Mars aren't dangerous at all. http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100117081507/babylon...
Betterment raises $10 million financing
Human Flesh Meat Market Opens In London
Metal walls also cause condensation. Here's a good reference: http://www.tincancabin.com/

Building a 3 container cabin I believe wound up costing the guy $25,000

I've been thinking of making a tin-can-cabin, some sort of summer-vacation spot but I can't imagine trying to make a all-year-livable space in new york with containers. May as well buy an old building and pay to clean out all the asbestos.
I always assumed that this was why all the lyrics websites were shitty and ad-infested

About a year ago someone talked about lyric websites (either here or on reddit) and they explained that the reason they have terrible adverts isn't because they get shut down, it's because user retention is terrible. People only look for lyrics now and again[1], it's google -> click link -> read lyrics -> leave, there's no browsing, very few people have any loyalty to any lyric site, so they have to make as much as they can off that 1 visit because they probably won't be back.

[1] I think rapgenius solves this problem by providing value way beyond just lyrics
I downvoted because it's not relevant to its parent. As freehunter points out, the answer's not "no" it's "please refine the question". Perhaps you found my mini-analysis on the frequency of Betteridge references informative, in which case I welcome your upvotes.
Google in particular is a fun case study:

$1,167,000 revenue per employee [1]
$299,000 net income per employee [1]
$106,000 mean salary [2]

[1] http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=financials&symbol=N%5EGOO...

[2] http://www.salarylist.com/company/Google-Salary.htm
Cognitive dissonance, likely. It doesn't look like what it is, no matter which part of it you're using at the time. Its selfish features aren't Self, its speech impediment isn't really a Lisp, its coffee-flavouring isn't Java... No matter which door you open, you get a preliminary sense of déja vu, then realise that you haven't actually been there before; it's just something that reminds you of something else. It takes a while to settle into JS mode, where the language is just what it is, and not "sort of like X, but completely different". (Once I'm there, I like to stay there—but there's always something else to do that drags me into another language, and when I come back, I experience the same cycle process again.)
Awesome news! I've been a fan of rapgenius for a while and its nice to see Mahbod getting props. I hadn't considered the possibilities outside of hip hop lyrics, but as the article points out there is a huge potential within legal text, academic papers, etc (hopefully not the bible or other religious text... I can imagine that becoming a huge clusterf*ck).
Met Office threatened with legal action over 'pessimistic' forecasts
More data: they employ many Americans, and the campus is filled with them (of all sorts of ancestries, not exclusively imigrants from India or China). According to http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=aapl they employ a number of people adequate to sustain a revenue/employee of $2.351 million/year. The factories are not Apple's, but are contracted manufacturers, the same used by many others (Dell, etc).
Http://www.leerwiki.nl/Zo_kies_je_een_geschikte_gezichtsbruiner
Betterment does some useful innovation in finance and we can hope for even more now.
"hackertown is a an epicenter"

If you can't be bothered to have someone proofread your first sentence there is no way I'm even thinking about giving you money.
Read the official announcement on Rap Genius: http://rapgenius.com/Marc-andreessen-why-andreessen-horowitz...
Up Up, Down Down, Left Right Left Right.

Works every time.
Is it not possible that he didn't know that Seagate was owned by Samsung (I didn't)? Or at least not blame them for the actions of Seagate nearly 20 years ago.
after the last question I'm 90% positive he is trolling.
That sounds like an interesting story. Would you mind sharing a few more details? :)
How is Dropbox Positioned vs. Apple and Google in Mobile Cloud Storage
Salman Khan on the Diane Rehm show this morning (NPR audio)
DreymaR's Extensive Yet Modular AR'Senal (for X KeyBoarding)
The iPod Touch's 4" screen has a retina display, the iPad mini is expected to have a non-retina screen.
Intriguing. It's hard to imagine any creative work of art or engineering that couldn't benefit from well-curated annotation. Browsing around Rap Genius, I can't help but wish for a digital copy of Ulysses with this kind of interface to crowd-sourced commentary.

But outside of big traffic draws like song lyrics, I'm not sure what the monetization potential is.
Overall I agree with your assessment. Some points that I'm taking the liberty of clarifying or adding some information:

>A student can apply for as many as 75 companies

This is the case for students majoring in the humanities. Engineers typically tend to apply to fewer (15 or so). Some of them rely on corporate connection between the lab/school and a company to get a leg-in on the process.

>you beg to your parents to fund you through your master and you then try again once you are done with your master (if they are rich enough, it isn't cheap and same thing goes for Ph.D.;s)

It should be noted that PhD candidates must pay tuition, much like a Master's student. A PhD also makes it more difficult to find a job.

>the only successful Japanese start-up that I can think of that has gone big in the last 20 years or so is Rakuten

GREE and DeNA (social gaming companies) are the other big ones. I'm kind of impressed with kakaku.com too (a price-comparison site for retail goods).

>but the way foreigners fit into this whole mess is that we, to a large extent, are exempted from this honour system.

I think that one of the main reasons why the status quo is so impenetrable is precisely because of the racial and cultural homogeneity of the country. I presume you are in Tokyo, where the culture is at least somewhat mitigated by the presence of foreign nationals and their foreign employees, but as I'm sure you know, things get pretty monotonic when you step out into the other major cities.
I guess they are feeling the heat with the recent changes in pricing
But if the rights issue wasn't there, wouldn't Google build a competitor in a few days? It's a fairly simple website to make, and lyrics websites do a ton of traffic.
Perhaps you can claim fair use if you're critiquing and understanding the work rather than just pasting it? A quick search turned up no legal troubles for Rap Genius thus far. They do have an email address for DMCA takedowns, however.
This was the only alert I wrote myself for my startup (the rest are powered by @newrelic). Saved me many times. Usually only happens when some log goes out of control unexpectedly.
How Microsoft is using Xbox Live to get people to vote
Java Simple Event Architecture
Of course it does.

If crime were perpetrated, objectively and statistically overwhelmingly, by black people, or black people were objectively and statistically overwhelmingly criminals, it would be fair to talk about crime being a thing black people do.

The crucial difference is the statistics do not remotely support such assertions. In fact, they flatly reject such relationships.

Nor is being a criminal remotely causally linked to being black, the way being ignorant of straight white male privilege is almost (again: almost tautologically) causally linked to being a straight white man, or the way being a 'mansplainer' is almost causally linked to mansplaining. [1]

[1] To state it more explicitly: you can't likely grow up mansplaining and reach maturity without having the tendency pointed out to you if you're not a man. Because our cultural baggage is that women defer to men and thus face more scrutiny/skepticism/criticism than men when they do disagree.

So even if we assume that everyone starts off equally likely to be a 'mansplainer' by mere chance, the female mansplainers are overwhelmingly going to have that tendency pointed out, challenged and be made aware of it.

Mansplaining adults will, thus, be almost entirely men because of said cultural baggage.

Similarly, it's pretty much impossible to grow up and reach maturity ignorant of remaining straight white male privilege in the US unless you happen to be a straight white male. If we again assume that the tendency to be 'blind' to remaining racism/sexism/homophobia is randomly distributed, only those with that 'blindness' who are straight/white/males are likely to reach maturity without having encountered situations that made it impossible to remain ignorant of such remaining tensions.

Applying the same considerations: if we assume the tendency to commit crimes is evenly/randomly distributed at birth, there's no evidence that non-black would-be criminals overwhelmingly receive some life experience that steers them away from crime. To the contrary we find that white would-be criminals are much more likely to have life experiences that result in the crimes they do commit being excused or ignored.

So not only is there no evidence that being black makes you more likely to commit crime, there is evidence that being white makes you far less likely to be charged, prosecuted and found guilty.

That is: a black person is no more likely to commit crime, refuting the assertion, and they have the deck stacked against them, meaning that asserting such a link is not only wholly unfounded by the data, but it takes a further act of white privilege to ignore the existence of the stacked deck.
However, they are still questionably legal, and they do get shut down from time to time.
Calling All Introverts: How to Thrive in an Extroverted Workplace
Can't wait to see Maru cat version
> Inciting curiosity works better than clarity

How many of those new users continue to use the service one month later vs your previous engagement levels? Just curious.
It's mostly free actually, and the pricing is very flexible otherwise: http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/06/lower-pricin...
Have anyone implemented any of this on Windows, perhaps with Autohotkey? Is it possible?
I started using the soap, brush, and DE razor about 3 years ago. A year ago, I shaved my head to start off a new job with something different. Maybe I haven't mastered the technique, but the last time I tried the DE on the head, I butchered up my scalp. I suppose practice would help, but I'm too timid to try after the first attempt. I'll stick with the electric shave and touch-ups with dollar-store triple-blade razors for the head.

I haven't shaved since May, and now that bead-head is once more a big problem, I might shave before the fall temps get too cold.
While the visual style of the code may be perplexing to most of us, I imagine it might make javascript far easier for a dyslexic person to read.
Breaking Backend as a Service Myths
Interesting comment re: the best outcome being failure. I could see failure as going terribly for family/friend relationships. People are often at their most stressed in situations where their economic stability is threatened, and stress generally leads to conflict, in my experience.